Blackfish

Question 1:

1. Factual truth of the documentary:

In the documentary, Sea World blamed all faults on the accidental death to the trainers due to violation of safety rule in order to protect its interests. In an interview, the chief executive officer of the Blackstone group, the largest stake in SeaWorld Entertainment said “SeaWorld Dawn Brancheau violated safety rules during the incident that led to her death in 2010 -- despite previous claims by SeaWorld to the contrary”. However, in an interview with CNN, Sea World claimed that the documentary did not mention the Sea World commitment to its team members and guests and to the care and welfare of its animals as well as improvement to its killer whale facilities, equipment and procedures both before and after the death of Dawn.

The movie also demonstrated that Sea World tried to conceal the truth behind three death of the employees related to Tilikum, including Keltie Byrne, a 20-year-old marine biology student and competitive swimmer, slipped into the pool, a 27-year-old man named Daniel P. Dukes was found dead and naked, draped over Tillikum’s back and Tilikum was involved in a third incident when he killed Dawn Brancheau, a 40-year-old trainer was killed following a "Dine with Shamu" show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilikum_%28orca%29). However, Sea World claimed “The film falsely suggests that SeaWorld “blamed” Ms. Brancheau for her death.  We have never done that.  She was our colleague and we mourn her loss to this day”. Some critics assumed that the motives of this action could be attributed to misleading its stakeholders to assuming that the deaths were an unexpected incident without affecting its interests. This secret, however, caused confusion toward other trainers and put them into danger when continuing with the killer whales.

In addition to the death of its employees, the documentary pointed out Sea World instructed its employees to tell lie about the life of the killer whales....